Category: Signs Of Life

General thoughts, mostly blog updates

Posted on

Have Computers Ruined Music?

After watching Rick Beato’s video “How Computers Ruined Rock Music” I had to sit down and think about music, and how it impacts me. Beato obviously knows what he’s talking about, and is good at producing tracks. But does the idea that “rock music was ruined by computers” ring true?

Well, sort of.

If you expand the idea of “computers” to technology in general, then no, it hasn’t ruined rock music. Without some of the technology we have now, things like the Digitech Whammy wouldn’t exist (and neither would Rage Against The Machine’s iconic sound). There wouldn’t be John Mayer’s “Bigger Than My Body.” We wouldn’t have affordable synthesizers and amplifiers and effects. Technology has come up with some amazing tools for making music, which have greatly impacted rock-n-roll for the better.

But on the production side, I think Beato is very much correct: Perfection is the enemy of Good. He goes into great detail explaining why editing songs so that every part is perfectly on beat and in tune ruins the “feel” of the song. He’s absolutely right.

Music performance, as an art form, is being over-produced into oblivion by the Photoshop generation.

Continue reading “Have Computers Ruined Music?”
Posted on

New Directions

I feel like God is drawing me into wanting to do music ministry full time. I don’t know what that will look like yet.

I don’t know if that’s something I need to go back to school for, and I’m not really thrilled about that. It would be exciting, but at the same time… I don’t feel like I could do it with my current job.

I really like my current job, but I know it is not my life’s calling. I would much rather teach music and lead worship for a living. But how can I do that? I can’t just quit my job. Not yet, at least.

What would that (going back into music ministry) look like? How could I (understanding it’s not me) make that happen? Why is God showing me this? Why is God giving me a desire to make worship my career, after so many years of me saying “I will never do professional music ministry again”? Can I do that without sacrificing my heart? I want to be pure in motivation. I never want to make money worshipping. But I would love to be able to do that all the time.

Continue reading “New Directions”
Posted on

Taking Out the Trash

Once again, I was alerted to the fact that my WordPress site has been hacked once more… I don’t think I’m really surprised at it any more. There’s so much going on, and between PHP, MySQL, and WordPress, there’s tons of exploits that allow people to take over a website.

Thankfully they didn’t delete everything. Which reminds me… time to make backups again.

Posted on

Brave New World

As I posted about previously, I’ve decided in my feeble attempts to remain modern, hip, and “relevent” I’m diving into trying WordPress’ new Gutenberg editor. There will be some things you might notice, like drop caps and such. You may see some spacing or paragraph types that look weird.

On my end, things look much different. There aren’t any controls to modify blocks, other than adding colors or external CSS classes… which means I would have to learn CSS to be able to make any use of these blocks.

There’s no “more” bar to insert, there’s no font options, no settings to modify. In essence, the editor has changed from a word processor to a graphic layout editor. And as I said, I’m a writer… not a coder. But I discover when you click the magic “+” button between blocks… holy cow, there’s everything!

Continue reading “Brave New World”
Posted on

Blog Woes (and Other First World Problems)

A big part of having a blog is writing stuff. And as a semi-serious writer, I don’t really have a lot of time to mess with stuff that’s gimmicky. I need something simple, effective, and trouble-free.

For writing blog posts, I normally would use the WordPress editor- until I discovered they recently replaced it with a piece of garbage something called the “Gutenberg Editor.” I’ll be honest: the new WordPress Gutenberg block editor is extremely frustrating and unintuitive for me. And I’m not alone. As for now, you can install a plugin that lets you revert back to the classic WordPress TinyMCE editor (why do I even have to manually install something for that??).

But the absolute worst part of this whole disaster is that WordPress admins and developers absolutely don’t care at all that everybody hates it. This alone is enough reason to give me pause.

Realistically, this is a huge PR disaster for Automattic. They have gotten so much negative press for this, they’d have to be blind not to realize this mandatory rollout was a huge mistake. It even caused their Accessibility lead developer to resign.

I’m not a web developer or a programmer- I’m a writer. I don’t do custom coded plugins, I don’t use custom media types, I don’t mess with CSS or PHP unless I have to, and even if I did, there are already plugins that handle all those functions.

I don’t use WordPress.com’s commercial products- I use the open-source software backend to run my self-hosted site. I feel like they should be free to develop whatever they want for paying clients as need be, but the backend should have been left alone. It’s painfully obvious they only were considering their commercial clients, and not the thousands of developers (running millions of sites) that use the backend in different ways. Even with thousands of pieces of feedback saying this was a bad idea, they went forward with it anyway.

However:

In an attempt to not sound like a whiny brat, I’m going to actually try to make something good out of this. I understand why WordPress.com changed their editor to compete with other layout-driven website designers like Wix. I understand that the old editor had issues. I know there needed to be improvement (even if I vehemently disagree with the direction they went).

So in order for me to fully use the Gutenberg editor, it will require me to learn what it can do, and why. Only then will I be able to give constructive feedback to hopefully make it better for people like me, who don’t care about all the developer stuff and just want to write.

Going forward, I will be documenting my foray into the Brave New World of blocks and web developing and all that stuff, even if only for me to be able to have a well-reasoned argument as to why I don’t like it. Who knows, I may even throw in a tutorial here and there as I learn how to use it.

But really, isn’t writing supposed to be fun and enjoyable? It kind of makes me wonder if WordPress was trying to make blogging more difficult. I don’t appreciate them trying to force me to become a developer (or having to pay someone else to). I just want to write.

We shall see: time will tell. The proof is in the pudding. And all that stuff.

(But I’m still a firm believer in “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”)

Posted on

To Micro-Blog, or not to Micro-Blog?

I’ve been in the blogging “business” for almost two decades now. My first blog was on Earthlink dial-up, way back in the 90’s. Writing my thoughts, sharing my experiences, teaching the lessons I’ve learned over the years. Asking hard questions, and working through the answers.

I was a blogger way before Facebook existed, before Twitter was even a thing. Then all of these “micro-blogging” sites popped up, which were geared towards a business model of advertising. They are an ADD’ers worst nightmare. There isn’t any meaningful discourse, only re-posted sound bytes, advertising, and virtual chain letters (and dank memes). There are now entire sites built around only reposting other people’s content (I’m looking at you, Pinterest).

I’m not interested in the spammy advertising model of any of these micro-blogging sites. I don’t care about likes, reposts, adverts, or clickbait headlines. I don’t care about shallow hit-and-run interaction. I could certainly do without all the visual noise and clutter.

What exactly am I gaining from participating in these time sinkholes? Am I using them to advertise something? If you’re not, chances are I don’t need them in my life, taking over my spare time. I certainly don’t need them. And I’ve been on almost all of them at some point. Yes, even Myspace. Sigh.

I think this speaks to how our communication, as a whole, has become largely trite and ineffective. I don’t enjoy using micro-blogging sites, because you never get more than scratching the surface. The superficiality of it all just makes me want to stop talking to shallow people. And because of the nature of the media, that’s all you ever get to see: people’s shallow thoughts. Meaningless “likes” and re-shares. There are very few people with new ideas, and even fewer who can articulate those ideas effectively. 99% of what we see and hear on social media is regurgitated pablum (and untrustworthy, at that).

So how shall we utilize the internet for its intended purpose of conveyance of ideas? Continue reading “To Micro-Blog, or not to Micro-Blog?”

Posted on

Time To Slow Down

So much has happened in the last few months. Where do I begin?

First, let me say I’m extremely thankful that there are people who actually still read what I write here.

Second, there have been huge changes in my life as of late. I started a new job (which I love, and am actually good at). My family joined a large church, participated in a local (to us) campus launch, and a year later, we ended up moving to a smaller, less hectic church environment. I’m slowly working on minimizing more things out of my life. I’m focusing on developing my relationship with God, and learning more about the Holy Spirit’s role in my life.

I’m playing music a lot. I’m working on cars a lot less. Remodeling the house. Teaching my kids. Serving my wife, and the church. Trying to keep a grip on everything.

I’m also still (after a long hiatus) co-hosting the awesome ADD Masterminds podcast.

But…

Continue reading “Time To Slow Down”

Posted on

I Literally Just Can’t

I have been frustrated lately. It seems as though God is trying to stretch me into things I wasn’t trying to stretch into. I’m having things thrown at me from every angle, and sometimes I can barely keep track of what day of the week it is, much less all the things people want me to do.

One of the things I want to prioritize is spending time with my kids. However, that’s hard to do when they’re teenagers, and don’t want to do anything with me. Or they want to do things with me that I can’t do. Makes it kind of hard. And I spend time taking care of them, cooking for them, cleaning up after them, playing with them, driving them places… any chance I get (when they’re not busy), I’m spending it with my kids. My dad never could do that with me. My kids have no idea how good they have it.

I’ve also got creative forces pulling me every which way, including writing another book, recording an album, and relaunching a podcast. Also rebuilding my ’65 Rambler. And possibly building more cosplay props. I’ve been asked to play in concerts, join in writer’s groups, attend ceremonies, organize activities, and who knows what else. I barely have the time and energy to do *one* of those, so certainly not all of them. Continue reading “I Literally Just Can’t”

Posted on

Near-Life Experience

“We just had a near-life experience, fellas!”

Today has been 6 years since I got hit by a car. I can’t believe how far I’ve come since then, and how good God has been to me and my family.

I’ve learned so much since then! And I can honestly say I’ve heard God’s voice on these times in ways I never could have imagined beforehand. God has a way of getting your attention like that.

I’m not going to make a huge deal of it, because- you know- life goes on. But just wanted to say that every year my hip hurts less and less, and this year it’s almost completely normal. I’ve been doing a lot of cycling (more at the beginning of the year, but I’m getting back into it) and I thought it would protest, but amazingly, it’s been quite uneventful, which is good when you’re talking about potential problem areas.

Along these lines, I’m looking at starting up a bicycle-themed men’s small Bible study group. There’s tons of life applications we can learn together from it, and I’m looking forward to that possibility. All of this will happen at our new church home, of course- I’ll post more about that transition when I can put my thoughts together on it. Lots to say there, but I want to say it in a way that doesn’t come across as critical, because it wasn’t under bad terms at all.

Posted on

Struggling With The Spirit

When we believers struggle with the Holy Spirit in our lives, it doesn’t mean we’re fighting against God- not just against Him, anyway- it also means we’re fighting against our own nature. Our war is a spiritual war, according to Ephesians 6:12

“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but but against rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

Our nature as sinful people can’t be trusted. On our own, we’re weak. Our minds lie to ourselves, telling us we don’t need God, we don’t need redemption, and we don’t need help.

But we do need help. And that help comes in the form of the Holy Spirit.

Over the last 20 years, I’ve learned a lot about God and Scripture. I learned a lot about Jesus Christ, and the early church in the book of Acts. But one thing I was hardly taught was The Holy Spirit. And the sad part is, I don’t think it was intentional.

I think churches today fall into two main camps: those who completely ignore the Spirit’s work in believers’ lives, and those who overemphasize it to the point where even other believers think they’re crazy. There seems to be no middle ground, no in-between. No common sense approach seems to have taken hold.

I’m just now, after 20 years in the faith, realizing that I knew next to nothing about the Holy Spirit. And that shouldn’t be the case- certainly not in America.

What then, do we know about the Spirit? What does the Scripture say about Him? What is His role in my life? Continue reading “Struggling With The Spirit”